Book excerpt: The 5th Experimental Chaos Conference was a gathering of scientists and engineers who work on real-world systems that behave in a nonlinear and, often, chaotic fashion. The proceedings present discoveries of chaotic behavior, explanation of nonlinear phenomena in the laboratory, and applications of nonlinear and chaotic effects to devices and techniques for improving performance and surmounting technical obstacles. Experimental work is presented on chaos in semiconductor superlattices, spatiotemporal chaos in magnetic materials, instabilities in magnetic fluids, bifurcations of hexagonal patterns in lasers, and discrete rotating waves. New phenomena are exhibited on amplitude death in coupled oscillators, vortex crystals, wakes in soap films, chaotic dynamics of ocean waves, and microscopic chaos. Applications of chaotic dynamics are offered in the areas of chaotic pulse trains in digital communications, detection of changes in EEGs, detection of unstable periodic orbits in noisy data, cellular automata and warfare, detection of n: m phase synchronization, methods in acoustic chaos, chaos in the machine tool-cutting process, and a nonlinear airfoil. The broad range of topics and fields touches on a wide variety of systems whose behavior is now better understood and applied through the use of chaotic dynamics